AZ-900 Practice Test 18 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs an e-commerce web application on Azure virtual machines that are part of a virtual machine scale set configured with an autoscale rule based on CPU utilization. During a flash sale, customer traffic surges, causing the average CPU utilization across all instances to exceed 75% for five minutes. The scale set automatically provisions three additional VM instances to handle the increased load. After the sale ends, traffic normalizes, CPU utilization drops below 30%, and the scale set automatically removes the extra instances. This scenario best illustrates which characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the ability of a cloud system to dynamically scale resources up or down based on demand. In this scenario, the virtual machine scale set automatically adds three VM instances when CPU utilization exceeds 75% for five minutes and removes them when utilization drops below 30%, demonstrating rapid, automated scaling to match workload changes.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Fault tolerance

Answer

Disaster recovery

Question 2

A company runs a critical application on-premises and plans to extend its data center to Azure. The company needs a dedicated, private network connection between the on-premises network and Azure that bypasses the public internet. The connection must provide higher bandwidth and more reliable, lower-latency connectivity than a site-to-site VPN. The company also requires a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the connection's availability. Which Azure service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Azure ExpressRoute. Azure ExpressRoute is the correct choice because it provides a dedicated, private network connection from on-premises to Azure that bypasses the public internet entirely. It offers higher bandwidth, lower latency, and more reliable connectivity than a site-to-site VPN, and it includes a financially backed SLA for availability (typically 99.95% or higher). This makes it ideal for critical applications requiring consistent, private, and high-performance connectivity.

Answer

Azure VPN Gateway

Answer

Azure Virtual WAN

Answer

Azure Application Gateway

Question 3

A company runs its production workloads on an on-premises data center to meet strict regulatory compliance requirements. However, the development and testing teams use Azure to quickly provision environments on demand for short-term projects. The teams need to occasionally transfer data between the on-premises environment and Azure. Which cloud deployment model does this setup represent?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. This setup combines an on-premises data center (private cloud) with Azure (public cloud) to form a hybrid cloud. The hybrid cloud model allows workloads to remain on-premises for compliance while leveraging Azure's elasticity for dev/test, with data transfer bridging both environments.

Answer

Public cloud

Answer

Private cloud

Answer

Community cloud

Question 4

What is Azure Disk Storage used for?

Accepted Answer

Providing persistent block storage volumes for Azure Virtual Machines. Azure Disk Storage provides durable, high-performance block storage for Azure Virtual Machines. Each disk is a virtual hard disk (VHD) that can be attached to a VM as an OS disk or data disk, offering persistent storage that survives VM reboots and re-deployments. It is the primary storage option for IaaS workloads requiring low-latency, random-access I/O.

Answer

Hosting static websites and web content

Answer

Sharing files between multiple computers via SMB protocol

Answer

Archiving infrequently accessed data at low cost

Question 5

A company runs a global e-commerce platform. During a flash sale, demand surges from 10,000 users to 500,000 users in minutes. The platform automatically provisions additional servers to handle the load and deprovisions them after the sale. Which cloud characteristic is most directly demonstrated?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the ability of a cloud system to automatically scale resources up or down based on demand. In this scenario, the platform provisions additional servers during the flash sale and deprovisions them afterward, directly demonstrating elasticity. This contrasts with other characteristics like high availability, which focuses on uptime, not dynamic scaling.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Fault tolerance

Answer

Geographic distribution

Question 6

A company's CFO is evaluating the financial impact of moving the company's on-premises data center to Azure. The on-premises data center requires significant upfront investment for servers, storage, and networking equipment, which is depreciated over several years. In contrast, Azure offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model where the company pays only for the resources it consumes, with no upfront costs. The CFO wants to understand how this shift changes the company's financial reporting. Which statement accurately describes the financial difference between on-premises and cloud spending?

Accepted Answer

On-premises is a capital expenditure (CapEx), while Azure is an operational expenditure (OpEx).. On-premises data centers require significant upfront capital investment for hardware, which is capitalized as a capital expenditure (CapEx) and depreciated over time. Azure's pay-as-you-go model shifts costs to operational expenditure (OpEx), where you pay only for consumed resources with no upfront costs, directly impacting financial reporting by converting fixed costs to variable costs.

Answer

On-premises is an operational expenditure (OpEx), while Azure is a capital expenditure (CapEx).

Answer

Both on-premises and Azure are classified as capital expenditures (CapEx).

Answer

Both on-premises and Azure are classified as operational expenditures (OpEx).

Question 7

Which Azure service provides a way to build workflows that integrate apps, data, and services across cloud and on-premises environments?

Accepted Answer

Azure Logic Apps. Azure Logic Apps is the correct answer because it is a cloud-based platform for creating and running automated workflows that integrate apps, data, services, and systems across cloud and on-premises environments. It provides a visual designer and hundreds of prebuilt connectors to orchestrate business processes without writing code, making it ideal for enterprise integration scenarios.

Answer

Azure Functions

Answer

Azure Service Bus

Answer

Azure Event Grid

Question 8

A company runs a production web application on Azure App Service. The development team is working on a new version of the application and wants to deploy it to a staging environment to perform validation tests. After testing, they need to gradually shift a percentage of live user traffic to the new version while monitoring for issues. If any problems occur, they must be able to instantly send all traffic back to the original version with zero downtime. Which Azure App Service feature should the team use to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Deployment slots. Deployment slots are the correct choice because Azure App Service supports deploying different versions of an application to separate slots (e.g., staging) and then swapping them into production. The swap operation allows you to gradually shift traffic using slot auto-swap or manual swap with traffic routing, and if issues arise, you can instantly swap back to the original slot with zero downtime, as the swap preserves the warm-up state of the target slot.

Answer

Azure Traffic Manager

Answer

Azure Application Gateway

Answer

Azure Front Door

Question 9

A company stores a critical database in Azure Blob Storage. The data must remain available even if an entire Azure datacenter fails. The company uses the East US region, which supports availability zones. They want the lowest-cost storage redundancy option that protects against a full datacenter failure while keeping all data within the East US region. Which redundancy option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS). Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) is the correct choice because it synchronously replicates data across three availability zones within the East US region, ensuring data remains accessible even if an entire datacenter (one zone) fails. This meets the requirement for intra-region protection against a full datacenter failure at the lowest cost, as ZRS does not incur the additional expense of geo-replication.

Answer

Locally redundant storage (LRS)

Answer

Geo-redundant storage (GRS)

Answer

Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)

Question 10

Which Azure service provides a cloud-native SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution for detecting and responding to threats?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft Sentinel. Microsoft Sentinel is the correct answer because it is a cloud-native SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution that provides intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise. It collects data from various sources, including Azure, on-premises, and other clouds, and uses built-in AI and machine learning to detect and respond to threats in real time.

Answer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Answer

Azure Monitor

Answer

Azure DDoS Protection

Question 11

A company hosts a critical line-of-business application on Azure virtual machines. The application must remain available even if a single virtual machine fails due to hardware failure or operating system crash. The company deploys two virtual machines in an Availability Set and configures an Azure Load Balancer to distribute traffic. If one VM becomes unavailable, the Load Balancer automatically redirects traffic to the healthy VM. This configuration primarily demonstrates which benefit of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Reliability – ability to recover from failures and continue functioning. This configuration demonstrates reliability, a core cloud computing benefit, because the combination of an Availability Set and Azure Load Balancer ensures that the application remains operational even when a single VM fails due to hardware or OS issues. The Availability Set spreads VMs across fault domains and update domains to isolate failures, while the Load Balancer uses health probes to detect VM unavailability and redirect traffic only to healthy instances. This built-in redundancy and automatic failover capability directly aligns with the cloud's promise of high availability and fault tolerance.

Answer

Elasticity – ability to scale resources up and down

Answer

Security – protection against unauthorized access

Answer

Cost efficiency – paying only for consumed resources

Question 12

A company plans to deploy a critical application in two Azure regions to ensure disaster recovery. The company wants to guarantee that during a major regional outage, the recovery region is physically separated from the primary region and that planned maintenance updates are rolled out sequentially to minimize downtime. Which Azure feature should the company leverage when selecting the secondary region?

Accepted Answer

Region Pairs. Region Pairs are the correct Azure feature because they guarantee physical separation between paired regions (e.g., at least 300 miles apart) and ensure that planned maintenance updates are applied sequentially across the pair, with only one region updated at a time. This minimizes downtime during disaster recovery by reducing the risk of simultaneous failures and providing a predictable recovery window.

Answer

Availability Zones

Answer

Azure Front Door

Answer

Azure Site Recovery

Question 13

A company stores critical business data in an Azure Storage account. The data must remain available if a single Azure datacenter experiences a failure (e.g., fire, power outage). The company wants to minimize storage costs. Which storage redundancy option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS). Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) synchronously replicates data across three Azure availability zones within a single region, ensuring data remains available if an entire datacenter fails. This meets the requirement for datacenter failure protection while minimizing costs compared to geo-redundant options, as ZRS does not incur cross-region bandwidth charges.

Answer

Locally redundant storage (LRS)

Answer

Geo-redundant storage (GRS)

Answer

Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)

Question 14

What is the purpose of the Azure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator?

Accepted Answer

To compare the cost of running workloads on-premises versus on Azure. The Azure TCO Calculator is designed to help organizations estimate the cost savings of migrating on-premises workloads to Azure by comparing the total cost of ownership (including hardware, software, labor, and facility costs) of running those workloads on-premises versus running them on Azure. It does not generate a monthly bill for existing services or provide a cost estimate for new deployments; instead, it focuses on the financial comparison between on-premises and cloud environments.

Answer

To calculate the monthly bill for existing Azure services

Answer

To estimate the cost of new Azure services before deployment

Answer

To allocate Azure costs to different departments

Question 15

A company's development team wants to deploy a containerized application without worrying about the underlying virtual machines or Kubernetes control plane. They need a service that automatically manages the container orchestration, scales, and provides rolling updates. Which Azure compute service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed Kubernetes cluster, handling the control plane and worker node management, while allowing the development team to focus on deploying and managing containerized applications. AKS supports automatic scaling, rolling updates, and self-healing, meeting the requirement for a managed container orchestration service without worrying about underlying VMs or the Kubernetes control plane.

Answer

Azure Container Instances (ACI)

Answer

Azure Container Apps

Answer

Azure Service Fabric